In 1985, George began construction on Franklin & South Manchester Railroad, a hugely creative and detailed layout and one of the best the hobby has ever witnessed. Allen Keller visited George’s layout a second time to see for himself how the Franklin & South Manchester Railroad has advanced! He sat down with George to ask a few questions about his future plans for the rest of the layout. In this interview, you’ll learn how George plans to continue adding more small towns as well as the construction of an elaborate terminal underneath the city of Franklin. This layout is an absolute wonder for the eyes, and you have to see it with your own to truly believe how miraculous this endeavor was. We hope you’ll be as inspired as Allen was upon getting a full tour of George’s deft handiwork. Enjoy!

When building benchwork for model railroads, the first thing you have to plan and think through is the type of scene you want to construct. Depending on the size, shape and placement of your scene in a room, the benchwork you choose might vary. There are positives and negatives to each type of benchwork for

Oftentimes when building a model railroad layout, it’s beneficial to utilize a stacked scene with multiple levels. Multilevel model train benchwork offers a number of unique advantages to a scene, one of which being the illusion of grander scale. For instance, you might employ the layout of the multilevel model train benchwork if you were

The proper way to construct a model railroad yard layout has been a point of contention for modelers for decades. For many years, the tried-and-true method was to create a balloon-shaped staging yard complete with complex turnouts and switches. Eventually, though, pioneers of the field such as Tony Koester realized there was a better way

Nothing completes a model railroad quite like a well made backdrop. You can add a remarkable amount of realism to your model railroad layouts by setting the scene for a nice blue sky day with a room-brightening backdrop. To create your own illuminating backdrops for model railroads, all you’ll need are a few basic materials